Vol. II: Shaping Information and Communication ... - IMA,ZLW & IfU

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Set in the context of the human centred research tradition, the network focuses on the value
added applications of university research into the areas of social and economic change,
regional models of innovation and entrepreneurship, and their transferability between regions
and cultures. The EU partners represent five countries and diverse regions: UK, Denmark,
Germany, Wales and Italy. The Indian partners represent three diverse regions: Delhi, Punjab
and Gujerat. Hence some of the problems and opportunities to which the Network has
responded at the project formulation stage were:
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There were emerging models of innovation and entrepreneurship such as electronic
villages in India which European partners could learn and benefit from, thereby building
two-way sharing and transfer of knowledge.
Direct links between the university and productive sectors were weak in India, thereby
restricting the application of research and inhibiting entrepreneurial networking and
collaboration.
The levels of academic networking across disciplines and across regions in India were
rather weak in comparison to the European universities, thereby inhibiting collaboration in
education and research at the EU-India level.
A broader inter-disciplinary and multi-disciplinary focus of applied research needs to be
developed to overcome the limit of the discipline-centred research in modern industrial
culture.
The current technical focus of new media does not adequately respond to modern social
and economic needs of the information society, thereby limiting possibilities and
opportunities for the development of new forms of learning and earning organisations.
These observations were collected at the start of the project which is described in the
following paragraphs.
2. The Features of the Network
2.1 The partners
The EU partners within the Network of the project had well established expertise and
experiences in cross cultural education, applied research, comparative studies of innovation,
and cross cultural networking through collaboration in a number of European inter-university
network projects and entrepreneurial networking. The European partners brought to the